Top 40 character design tips - Part 1: Animal based characters

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11. Don’t recreate Frankenstein 

“Don’t bolt together two or more animals and expect it to look like a believable creature. Subtlety is the key to believability. For your audience to connect with your creature, they need to feel that they can understand what they’re looking at; that they’ve seen it before in some way.” -- Ryan Firchau, Senior concept artist, Measham, UK

12. Don’t be limited by convention

“Don’t limit yourself by drawing only classic sci-fi creatures. Everything can be turned into a creature, you just have to add eyes, a mouth and arms. Try to transform cars, trees or TV sets into creatures: anthropomorphism is the key to making an original graphical universe.” -- Jacques Bardoux, Illustrator and graphic designer, Paris, France

13. Don’t put veins on beans

“Bean shapes are simple, and simple shapes – squares, triangles, circles – are strong. They read well in silhouette, which is good when it comes to poses at the animation stage. The down-side is that sometimes people think they look like willies and write to the BBC to complain.” -- Stefan Marjoram, Freelance animation director, Bristol, UK

14. Don’t make it too creature-like

“The classic Disney guys talk about how their creatures always had human-like features, and how hard they had to work to make things like snakes scary, but not too scary. For example, in The Jungle Book, Ka the snake’s tongue is red, like a human’s tongue.” -- Katherine Isbister, Associate professor, New York City, USA

15. Don’t fix your proportions

“Experiment with different shapes and proportions. This can transform a character, the classic example being a big head with a small body and limbs – very cute. However, it’s probably more fun to break away from these rules and have fun playing around with different proportions.” -- TADO, Designers and illustrators, Sheffield, UK

16. Don’t overdo the ‘what if?’  

“Most animals have two key features: cephalization (major sense and communication organs are concentrated in the head area); and bilateral symmetry (the left and right sides are largely symmetrical). Make changes to these and viewers may struggle to identify with your creatures.” -- Helen Zhu, Freelance illustrator, Dallas, USA

17. Don’t use a million colours

“Forcing yourself to work with just a few colours will increase your ability to explore new things in your colour process, such as adding textures. The result will always be a good visual balance between the simple and complex, producing an original effect.” --   Alberto Cerriteño, Illustrator and designer, Portland, USA

18. Don’t put colour first

“Colour, for me, is not essential – the drawings of the character should still work when rendered in a simple black line. But when I do use colours, they can help communicate a character’s personality – pink and red may suggest a feminine, cute character, for instance.” -- Maria Vittoria Benatti, Graphic designer and illustrator, Modena, Italy

19. Don’t short-change evolution

“Don’t play the game too much by putting a lion loaf on a chicken corpse or the like. Think evolution: invent your own evolutionary run. Keep in mind that you’re designing a unique individual with typical (not stereotypical) qualities – qualities that only this character has.” -- Florian Satzinger, Production and character designer, Steiermark, Austria

20. Don’t overlook iconic symbols

“The skull is one of those cultural icons that everyone can take a swing at because of the rebellious nature it represents. When you deconstruct my version of the skull, it’s just circles and an inverted heart. It’s the simple lines I use to outline these collected shapes that makes it what it is.” -- Nick Carroll, Graphic designer and illustrator, Leicester, UK

Come back tomorrow to read Part 2, which is all about Human Character Design

Main image credit: Wayne Harris